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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in film history – and he remains without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. There he stands, with features like a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, chillingly static clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless until the moment he lunges toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous real-crime films have since revealed that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly an unknown at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar emerged. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his strictly demanding Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and drinking.

The title originates from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a pastry chef and man's man, a plain speaker who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and avoided expressing his feelings, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the way they had to go begging to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days there were grants to go to Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but fortunately found a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who maintains it's your duty to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Absolutely. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply